Mayor of Southern California city to plead guilty to acting as agent of China, feds say

LOS ANGELES — The mayor of the Los Angeles-area city of Arcadia has resigned and will plead guilty to illegally acting as an agent of China, officials said Monday.

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Eileen Wang, who was elected mayor of the city of 56,000 in 2022, appeared in federal court Monday and was released on a $25,000 bond.

She was charged Monday with one count of acting in the U.S. as an illegal agent of a foreign government and has agreed to plead guilty later, the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles said.

“By her own admission, Eileen Wang secretly served the interests of the Chinese government,” Roman Rozhavsky, assistant director of the FBI’s counterintelligence and espionage division, said in a statement.

Prosecutors said that Wang and Yaoning “Mike” Sun promoted “pro-PRC propaganda” in the U.S. through a website titled “U.S. News Center.” PRC refers to the People’s Republic of China.

Sun pleaded guilty in October to one count of acting as a foreign agent and is serving a four-year prison sentence, the U.S. attorney’s office said.

Wang’s plea agreement says she admits she acted as an agent of China’s government and did not notify the U.S. attorney general as required.

The agreement says Wang and Sun “received and executed directives from PRC government officials to post pro-PRC content on the website” and sometimes sought permission from Chinese government officials to post content.

Among the allegations is that John Chen, whom prosecutors described as a high-level Chinese government official, asked Wang in November 2021 to post an item to the website and wrote, “This is what the Ministry of Foreign Affairs wants to send,” the U.S. attorney’s office said.

Chen was sentenced to 20 months in prison in November 2024 after he pleaded guilty to bribery and acting as an unregistered agent of China.

Wang’s attorneys, Brian A. Sun and Jason Liang, said Monday that the conduct was related to her personal life and website and did not involve the city of Arcadia.

Wang and Yaoning Sun were in a romantic relationship, and Wang’s conduct involved “a media platform that she once operated with someone whom she believed to be her fiancé,” they said.

“She apologizes and is sorry for the mistakes she has made in her personal life. Her love and devotion for the Arcadia community have not changed and did not waver,” the attorneys said.

The charge carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, but the plea agreement says the government will recommend level reductions in the sentencing guidelines.

The agreement does not spell out an expected sentence range. A judge will determine her sentence.

The charge and the plea agreement were filed April 1 and unsealed Monday, according to court records.

In its statement, the U.S. attorney’s office did not say when the plea will be, but it said it was expected in the next several weeks.

Wang resigned as mayor of Arcadia, the city said on its website Monday. The City Council will select a new mayor at its next meeting, it said.

Arcadia is a city in Southern California’s San Gabriel Valley around 13 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles. It is in an area known for Asian-American communities, and around 59% of its residents identify as Asian, according to census data.